4 ms·

For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense of grandeur". Starting one is easy, but maintaining both quality and popularity is hard - here, H

by stared 2y ago

For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense of grandeur". Starting one is easy, but maintaining both quality and popularity is hard - here, HN is a rare exception.

stkdump 2y ago
Also I thank that moderating a popular forum is dang hard.
- mstade 2y ago
  I see what you did there, well played! :o)
- mgfist 2y ago
  So the secret to "hn for X" is "dang for X"
  - Seb-C 2y ago
    Now we need to make dang as a service.
- skizm 2y ago
  Idk if dang was in charge back in the day, but I remember HN used to shut off sign-ups whenever Reddit went down (very frequently like 10 years ago) so they didn’t get a flood of users looking for a low-effort Reddit like experience. Those are the kinds of things I’d never think about but are also what has kept HN so great. Genuinely glad this bit of internet has been so well maintained over the years.
t_mann 2y ago
> For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense of grandeur". it's a bit sad seeing such a derisive comment about self-hosting on HN
- dewey 2y ago
  It’s not about self hosting, it’s about how community building is hard.
  - t_mann 2y ago
    the post clearly implies that opting for independent hosting instead of creating a subreddit (the admittedly easier route, for community building as well as technologically) for a niche forum indicates a "sense of grandeur"
    - Avicebron 2y ago
      You might be kind of young, so there was this time when "Facebook for health" and "amazon for X" were used as legitimate pitch items as a way to frame the potential of whatever CRUD app someone was selling as a billion dollar visionary idea. It was very tiring. The modern equivalent is something like a "DALL-E 0llamma MLA is all you need" post about a random arvix article about ML
    - Levitz 2y ago
      What if such feeling is justified? Everything else equal, I'd rather have a community not belong to Reddit, and I'd be horrified if HN somehow "migrated" to being a sub, the difference between communities is enormous.
    - sbarre 2y ago
      That's not how I read it at all.. It's the "HN for..." part that is the sense of grandeur.. Not the idea of self-hosting vs. using Reddit or Discord. HN has been around for 15 years, it has earned its place as a quality community through time and much effort (i.e. moderation). So to call yourself "HN for..." as a brand new thing is like opening up a brand new coffee shop in your town and saying "we're the next Starbucks"...
  - andrewmcwatters 2y ago
    Building a community focused on something isn't hard, you grab a few people you know with shared interest, and they grab and invite their friends. Small game development communities everywhere thrive, I've never been a part of one that wasn't doing well. Building a large community not focused on anything is much harder.
chefandy 2y ago
Do you think your considering HN a clear exception to being “Reddit with a sense of grandeur” might have more to do with your vantage point than your ability to gauge the value of online communities?
- stared 2y ago
  I mean that referring to "HN for X" is like (more than a decade ago) "Facebook for X". I consider HN a clean exception to most (all?) online communities in which I have been participaing; in all other cases, the quality tanked, they became ghost towns, or they just changed from their original goal. Sure, there are many wonderful forums and special interest groups, and it is good that new ones have been created. Just HN is not something you start at, it is something you become.
- raincole 2y ago
  > might have more to do with your vantage point It has everything to do with the simple fact that HN was launched in '07, when Reddit wasn't that mainstream.
  - reddalo 2y ago
    And it hasn't really changed since '07 (and I say this in a very positive way).
    - wholinator2 2y ago
      Yes, honestly i think this is the largest contribution to HNs successful place in its niche. Every other website turned from articles to images to infinite scroll politics and gifs. They all did that because it sells more ads. HN has never made a design change that prioritizes anything over articles. And even when it does conform to the greater trends of most people reading comments over articles (increasing bubblifiation of popular beliefs) the comments are much huge quality here because we're all the kind of people who like a site with articles, and thus more people actually read the articles, and the feedback does not include the internet ubiquitous "social credit score" seen on numerical stats around every comment on nearly every other website.
newsclues 2y ago
and yet, because social networks degrade in quality over time (popularity brings about the riff raff), it's essential to start net social networks to maintain quality discourse.

by stared 2y ago

For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense of grandeur". Starting one is easy, but maintaining both quality and popularity is hard - here, HN is a rare exception.

stkdump 2y ago

Also I thank that moderating a popular forum is dang hard.

mstade 2y ago
I see what you did there, well played! :o)
mgfist 2y ago
So the secret to "hn for X" is "dang for X"
- Seb-C 2y ago
  Now we need to make dang as a service.
skizm 2y ago
Idk if dang was in charge back in the day, but I remember HN used to shut off sign-ups whenever Reddit went down (very frequently like 10 years ago) so they didn’t get a flood of users looking for a low-effort Reddit like experience. Those are the kinds of things I’d never think about but are also what has kept HN so great. Genuinely glad this bit of internet has been so well maintained over the years.

t_mann 2y ago

> For me, "HN for X" sounds like a "Reddit channel with a sense of grandeur". it's a bit sad seeing such a derisive comment about self-hosting on HN

dewey 2y ago
It’s not about self hosting, it’s about how community building is hard.
- t_mann 2y ago
  the post clearly implies that opting for independent hosting instead of creating a subreddit (the admittedly easier route, for community building as well as technologically) for a niche forum indicates a "sense of grandeur"
  - Avicebron 2y ago
    You might be kind of young, so there was this time when "Facebook for health" and "amazon for X" were used as legitimate pitch items as a way to frame the potential of whatever CRUD app someone was selling as a billion dollar visionary idea. It was very tiring. The modern equivalent is something like a "DALL-E 0llamma MLA is all you need" post about a random arvix article about ML
  - Levitz 2y ago
    What if such feeling is justified? Everything else equal, I'd rather have a community not belong to Reddit, and I'd be horrified if HN somehow "migrated" to being a sub, the difference between communities is enormous.
  - sbarre 2y ago
    That's not how I read it at all.. It's the "HN for..." part that is the sense of grandeur.. Not the idea of self-hosting vs. using Reddit or Discord. HN has been around for 15 years, it has earned its place as a quality community through time and much effort (i.e. moderation). So to call yourself "HN for..." as a brand new thing is like opening up a brand new coffee shop in your town and saying "we're the next Starbucks"...
- andrewmcwatters 2y ago
  Building a community focused on something isn't hard, you grab a few people you know with shared interest, and they grab and invite their friends. Small game development communities everywhere thrive, I've never been a part of one that wasn't doing well. Building a large community not focused on anything is much harder.

chefandy 2y ago

Do you think your considering HN a clear exception to being “Reddit with a sense of grandeur” might have more to do with your vantage point than your ability to gauge the value of online communities?

stared 2y ago
I mean that referring to "HN for X" is like (more than a decade ago) "Facebook for X". I consider HN a clean exception to most (all?) online communities in which I have been participaing; in all other cases, the quality tanked, they became ghost towns, or they just changed from their original goal. Sure, there are many wonderful forums and special interest groups, and it is good that new ones have been created. Just HN is not something you start at, it is something you become.
raincole 2y ago
> might have more to do with your vantage point It has everything to do with the simple fact that HN was launched in '07, when Reddit wasn't that mainstream.
- reddalo 2y ago
  And it hasn't really changed since '07 (and I say this in a very positive way).
  - wholinator2 2y ago
    Yes, honestly i think this is the largest contribution to HNs successful place in its niche. Every other website turned from articles to images to infinite scroll politics and gifs. They all did that because it sells more ads. HN has never made a design change that prioritizes anything over articles. And even when it does conform to the greater trends of most people reading comments over articles (increasing bubblifiation of popular beliefs) the comments are much huge quality here because we're all the kind of people who like a site with articles, and thus more people actually read the articles, and the feedback does not include the internet ubiquitous "social credit score" seen on numerical stats around every comment on nearly every other website.

newsclues 2y ago

and yet, because social networks degrade in quality over time (popularity brings about the riff raff), it's essential to start net social networks to maintain quality discourse.